A common classroom technique is to divide students up into several small groups, each of which works on a separate problem. At a later point in time, the instructor brings the students back together to report on the findings and progress of the individual groups. Members of a project team may likewise be divided up into several small groups, where each group is assigned one or more tasks to perform and/or solve. Periodically, a project manager may bring the members of the project team back together to report on the work of the individual groups.
E-Learning and “virtual classroom” products allow each student to be at a separate computer system, such as a personal computer (“PC”) and, instead of a classroom, meet in an online virtual space, often using web conferencing software, such as MICROSOFT's Live Meeting. While E-Learning and virtual classroom products may support the scenario of “breaking out” into smaller groups, current E-Learning and virtual classroom products that support this feature implement each “breakout room” as a separate, full-fledged web conference (or a meeting). Because each room (e.g., the “main room” and the “breakout rooms”) is a full web conference, there is a certain amount of server (or service) overhead associated with each breakout room. Also, joining a breakout room may be a slow process, as it typically requires a new connection to a server. It may be difficult for an instructor (e.g., a presenter in the web conference) to quickly switch from one breakout room to another breakout room. Similarly, an instructor who wishes to observe every room must be connected to every room's web conference, with all the attendant client-side overhead. Likewise, a student (e.g., a participant in the web conference) who is both in the main room and in a breakout room requires separate web conference clients for each, which generally increases central processing unit (“CPU”) and memory consumption on the student's PC. Moreover, it may be difficult or time consuming to send a file, document, or other piece of content from room to room.